Inner-city Gamble

Fox's Comedy-drama, South Central, Was Dropped

By Cbs As Too Much Drama, Not Enough Comedy.

April 5, 1994|By TOM JICHA TV/Radio Writer

South Central is one of those hybrids that turn TV programmers skittish. The new Fox show is a half-hour, so it should be a comedy. However, there is more drama and poignancy than gag lines in the series, set in the Los Angeles inner city.

Network executives shy away from square pegs for which they have a round slot. If they can't pigeonhole a show into a familiar genre, they treat it as a pariah. CBS originally commissioned South Central, then passed on it when the network saw the pilot.

One of the nice things about having an upstart like Fox around is it can afford to be different and take chances. So the newest network decided to give South Central a well-deserved shot.

South Central begins as if it were a comedy, if a rather dark one. Teen-ager Tasha Mosley greets a new day by taking a deep breath and quipping, "Nothing gets me started like the smell of gunpowder in the morning."

Then it takes a somber turn. Tasha's mother Joan, in a winning performance by Tina Lifford, was abandoned by her husband and is raising the family on her own. She has been recently laid off from her civil service job in a round of budget-cutting. Still, she is trying to maintain the family status quo. She even tries to hide her depressing employment plight from the kids.

Hers is often a demoralizing pursuit. She is reduced to begging, in vain, for a new job that will compensate her sufficiently to support the family.

At the neighborhood co-op market, where she has been a regular customer, she is humiliated by being told that from now on, she is on a cash-only basis. The check she kited in hopes of being able to beat it to the bank with money has bounced.

On the homefront, she is trying to keep her 16-year-old son Andre, played by potential teen idol Larenz Tate, away from the street gangs, which have already claimed another of her sons. She might have to look up at him, but Andre is still her "baby."

Although she pampers him, she refuses to tolerate his using disrespectful street jargon about women and absolutely forbids him from getting the youth status symbol, a beeper. Andre wants the device to keep in touch with his friends, especially females, but Joan knows that the police will jump to the conclusion that it is a drug dealer's business tool.

Joan also preaches to Andre about the pitfalls of irresponsible sex.

Tasha, played by Tasha Scott, must sacrifice part of her childhood to serve as a surrogate mother and homemaker in her mother's absence. Aware of the family's limited resources, Tasha doesn't ask for a lot. It breaks Joan's heart that she can't come through when her daughter does make a reasonable request.

With all her problems, Joan still finds room to take in an emotionally troubled foster child, 6-year-old Deion, played by Keith Mbulo.

That act typifies the tone of South Central. As tough as times are, there is a spirit of optimism. The pilot ends with the promise of a potential job for Joan.

Perhaps the best way to describe South Central is as a bleaker version of The Wonder Years. Indeed, one of South Central's executive producers, Michael J. Weithorn, received five Emmy nominations for his work on The Wonder Years.

Addressing the approach that he and his partner Ralph Farquhar settled upon for South Central, Weithorn said, "We're trying not to idealize life but to show as real a version of this family as can be done in a half-hour form ... We think comedy can come very naturally in the stories we want to tell. But not everything exists for laughs. Laughter is not the sole purpose or even the main purpose of this show."

Farquhar added, "One of the things we wanted to bring out is how much a family in South Central is like a family anywhere else, with the same hopes and desires and the same obstacles to overcome. Ultimately, [CBS) did not feel that the show we were doing was funny enough, in a traditional sitcom sense, to succeed with viewers."